on October 31, 2009 by admin in Shanghai, Comments (0)
Today’s Links: Sympathy for coal bosses? and other news
- Black Future: The coal bosses of Shanxi are tired of being the government’s whipping boys [Forbes] “One of the most reviled and reclusive villains in the Chinese economy has been the coal mine boss. The archetypal robber baron of the Chinese Gilded Age, he has been caricatured as ruthless, greedy, corrupt and uncivilized. Now the coal mine boss is casting himself as a human rights case. The government of China’s coal-rich Shanxi Province, southwest of Beijing, is trying to drive almost all private mine owners out of business, forcing more than 1,500 mines to shut down or sell out to state-owned enterprises at prices so low, coal bosses say, that some may go bankrupt.”
- Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years [Read Write Web] “Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time.”
- The French Connection’s China Connection [WSJ] “A French court Tuesday sentenced two businessmen convicted in the arms-for-oil “Angolagate” scandal that implicated 42 defendants including top politicians, civil servants and even the son of late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. One of the two, and a chief defendant in the case, is Pierre Falcone, who’s now in jail pending an appeal on the charges he helped arrange shipments of $790 million worth of weapons to Angola in the mid-1990s.”
- Chinese Law Reform on the PRC’s 60th Birthday [WSJ] “When it comes to legal reform in China, Western observers should adopt an attitude of cautious pessimism. Although political reform is needed to accelerate legal reform that would make government and the Party truly accountable, the Chinese leadership presently lacks the political will to press for energetic legal reform; in the meantime, too, Chinese legal culture can change only slowly.”
- In China, too, a health-care system in disarray [Washington Post] “Shen Baohou, 72, who once worked for a hydropower station in Sichuan province, has a serious heart problem, and he — and his children — are paying for it dearly. Doctors have operated twice on Shen to implant stents at a cost of more than $15,000, about five times China’s per capita income. Under China’s health-care system, the government pays 60 percent of his hospital expenses and virtually nothing for the medications and oxygen he has needed since.”
- Banned by Google? People’s Daily Web Site Claims It’s a Victim of Retaliation by Search Giant [WSJ] “Google (GOOG) has seen its fair share of troubles in China, from having its flagship search engine blocked to being scolded for peddling pornography. Last week, the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society accused the company of infringing the rights of Chinese authors through its Google Books project. And the drama continues. Now, the Web site of the People’s Daily is accusing Google of “malicious revenge” after Google searches for the People’s Daily Online’s books section turned up warnings that read: “This site may contain malicious software that could harm your computer.””
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Tags: Angola, Beijing, cautious pessimism, CEO Eric Schmidt, China, Coal, Eric Schmidt, google, Pierre, President Francois Mitterrand, Read Write, reform, Shanxi, Shanxi Province, Shen, Shen Baohou, Sichuan
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